Fine day. I went to town as usual. Morning passed as usual. I got a chance to go to the Athenaeum and read a little, for my Office work is trifling. Even the business I usually transact has ceased. My father’s 352Tenants do not come near me. Read a little more of the trials. A work very judiciously compiled—The records of crime exhibiting the force of the passions. How one error invariably leads to another. How the best feelings of human nature once perverted can produce the worst of consequences. Adultery and murder, Robbery and murder, Gaming and robbery, Forgery and licentiousness, are constantly connected. These however do not surprise. How much more strange is it, when there is an absence of all motive.

Returned to Medford, being the only one of the gentlemen who did. I had a quiet afternoon in which I read a part of an apologetic life of Cromwell which I found in the library of Mr. Brooks. It is unsound. The reasoning is almost all of it false. He must be justified upon different grounds. Mr. Brooks and Mr. Frothingham came out in the evening and announced a new case of disease in Boston. Quiet evening.